Health charity bosses have praised a community screening program in England that’s helped find thousands of lung cancer cases at an earlier stage.
The country’s public health service has offered free lung scans outside grocery store and sports stadiums and in town centers, since 2019.
People aged 55 to 74 who smoke or used to smoke are invited for the scans after an initial chat with a health professional, who determines if they’re high risk for the disease.
The screening scheme, which targets areas of the country with the highest lung cancer rates, has resulted in 5,037 diagnoses so far. Around 76% of these were found at stage one or stage two, when they are potentially curable, according to the country’s public health service.
The scheme has been particularly helpful in the most deprived parts of the country, where lung cancer is more common. More than a third of people living in the poorest areas of England were diagnosed at an earlier stage than before the checks began.
It will be rolled out to all parts of the U.K. by 2030.
Deadliest Form Of Cancer
Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the country, with 49,000 people diagnosed anually, according to Cancer Research U.K.
It’s also the most deadly cancer in the U.K., taking about 34,800 lives every year. Because of this, it’s a major target for health policy.
Lawmakers are already in the process of banning the sale of tobacco products to anyone born on after January 1 2009, in large part because of its links to cancer.
Free smoking cessation services are also available across the country, although funding for local authority-level initiatives has been squeezed in recent years.
Public health grants for local councils have fallen by 24 per cent since 2015/16 on a real-terms per capita basis, according to the Local Government Association. But top-up funding for stop smoking services were announced last year.
The country’s targeted lung checks are intended to find the disease as early as possible, when it’s more curable. Patients at this stage may have no symptoms, meaning it’s often diagnosed relatively late.
When symptoms are present, they include persistent hoarseness or coughs that last for at least three weeks or get worse, recurrent chest infections, coughing up blood, painful coughing or breathing, persistent breathlessness and an unexplained loss of apetite.
“It Could Save Your Life’
“You can be fit, healthy and have no symptoms but still have lung cancer,” said Paula Chadwick, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. “So it is so important to have the check. It could save your life.”
Cancer Research UK chief executive, Michelle Mitchell, said the programme was “already having a huge impact on people’s lives” in England “by bringing care into the community and offering stop smoking support.”
“We hope to see targeted lung screening implemented across the UK so people can benefit from potentially life-saving checks,” she said, adding that it was “essential that people can access help to quit smoking both during and after the programme.”
